Thursday, September 24, 2015

Gloucester, VA: Can We Trust The School Board? Failed Utopia

Can we trust the school board? You may need to watch this video several times over and really listen to what John Hutchinson is actually saying and not what you may think he may be saying because when you first hear him you are likely to get the wrong message. John Hutchinson appears to be addressing the issue of a Homeland Security audit. On the one had he is. On the other hand, it's not anywhere near as comprehensive as you may have been led to believe. It's a very clever tactic used to send you the wrong information and making you think that the School Board has done everything in their power to ensure the safety of the students, teachers and staff. We are going to show you that this may not be the case and give you the proper tools to figure it out for yourself. Let's start with a video on body language.

Now let's go back to the joint meeting between the school board and the board of supervisors. Let's discuss John Hutchinson's location of his hands when he was talking about the Homeland Security evaluation. His one hand was in his pocket. If you will also look again at how his head was dodging back and forth, he did not appear to be actually looking at anyone but instead below the level of anyone before him. What did you just see in the video here on body language? I am not suggesting he was lying. I am suggesting that he may have been trying to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone listening. Again, listen to what John Hutchinson says. The security evaluation was a transportation evaluation.

That means John Hutchinson was talking about the security for the bus system where Gloucester received high marks and why John did not want to get into specifics is because that would have revealed the slight of hand he just pulled in our opinion. That is a trust issue.

So does Page Middle school meet Homeland Security guidelines for safety? Is there such a thing as guidelines for safety from Homeland Security? Yes there are actual guidelines for safety and we have those guidelines and we are going to share them with everyone here reading this. You can make up your own mind after doing the proper research whether or not the school board has done due diligence in ensuring the safety of the students. The guidelines are 317 pages long and very comprehensive and well done. It's a very impressive document. At the end of the book is a checklist that you can take with you and conduct your own evaluation. What we see is failure after failure after failure here to meet most of those guidelines.

What will they argue back on this? The Homeland Security guidelines are just that. Guidelines. As we understand how the federal government works, if they are mandatory, then the federal government would have to fund each project. So guidelines are setup instead allowing states and localities to determine what the priorities should be.

Homeland Security Building RecommendationsSo above is the Homeland Security guidelines for schools. Look through it and learn what those guidelines are and then take a copy of the checklist to Page Middle school and see how it stacks up. We can tell you that one local resident pounded on the school board about these issues and even provided the school board with the exact information above before Page Middle school was constructed. The School Board ignored these recommendations and that you can easily prove to yourself. To make it easier for you we have made a separate checklist that you can download for free from our slideshare site. It's the same checklist as in the above Homeland Security book we just made it easier to print out for you because we want you to see all of this for yourself.

Homeland Security Building Design Recommendations ChecklistWe apologize for the annoying auto play of the Bos, School Board, meeting video as it is out of our control and the default option from the county that can not be changed even though it shows as an option. We did not choose the auto play option which means it's supposed to be off. Technical difficulties the county needs to address. This is only one area in that video from the BoS/School Board where we have a lot of issues. More stories coming very soon.